Whilst visiting gardens in the Netherlands in the late 1990s, I decided I must make a pilgrimage to see his Piet Oudolf’s garden at Hummelo. He was a rising star in the garden world. It was early May, and in … Continue reading
Until a few years ago, the Hilltop site at the Royal Horticultural Garden at Wisley was a storage yard, an uninspiring glasshouse and a line of somewhat tired small show gardens. There was a small conventional vegetable garden nearby, and … Continue reading
Just a few miles from two internationally known great gardens, Sissinghurst and Great Dixter, made famous by their media-savvy owners, lies Pashley Manor, a less well-known garden in the English Country Garden style. The owners, the Sellick family bought the … Continue reading
Lotusland is a garden that I have long wanted to visit; a botanical fantasy created by a wealthy failed opera singer with the added allure of very restricted opening times. Set high in the hills above Santa Barbara it is … Continue reading
If you put a fine, thorough-bred Arab stallion and a cutesy, shaggy donkey together in the same pasture you can appreciate their respective characters and charms, but they are bound to be compared to the detriment of one or the … Continue reading
I have always been a bit suspicious of the modern and contemporary art market. I can remember Alfred Taubman, the chairman of Sothebys, being imprisoned in the early 2000s for price-fixing, New York dealer Larry Gagosian being embroiled in a … Continue reading